by the first ascensionists, thereby putting into practice his desire to climb as his predecessors Georg Winkler and Emil Zsigmondy had: in a pure style, meaning without any artificial aids (without guides in Zsigmondy's case and solo, in Winkler's). Pitons and carabiners were just starting to be effectively adapted for use in the mountains. At first, they were just used for protection or securing a rappel line, but then increasingly became used for upward progress, for instance as hand or footholds, or to secure the rope for a pendulum or tension traverse. To Preuss, this was nothing less than cheating. You should have to bring yourself up to the level of a difficult new route by improving your abilities; you shouldn't have to bring the mountain down to your level by improving your technological gadgetry. Preuss prized human achievement, measuring ourselves against the mountains, not technological achievement, reducing the mountain to the measure of our tools: With artificial climbing aids, you have transformed the mountains into a mechanical plaything. Eventually, they will break or wear out, and then nothing else will be left for you to do than to throw them away. Mauerhakenstreit (piton dispute) In September 1911 Preuss's essay "Artificial Aids on Alpine Routes" appeared in the Deutsche Alpenzeitung. This essay, an incendiary polemic against the increasing use of artificial aid in the Alps, sparked off a series of published exchanges from such renowned alpinists of the day as Tita Piaz and Franz Nieberl. This debate became known as the Mauerhakenstreit or the piton dispute. It was in a later essay that Preuss distilled the main points of his ethics of pure style into his celebrated six principles: You should not be equal to the mountain climbs you undertake, you should be superior. The degree of difficulty that a climber is able to overcome with security on the descent and also believes himself capable of with an easy conscience must represent the upper limit of what he climbs on the ascent. The justification for the use of artificial aids consequently exists only in the event of an immediately threatening danger. The piton is an emergency reserve and not the basis for a method of working. The rope is permitted as a relief-bringing means but never as the one true means for making the ascent of the mountain possible. The principle of security belongs to the highest principles. But not